


Fireside Tales

by tersa (alix)



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Camping, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fire, Fluff, Melancholy, Storytelling, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:31:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alix/pseuds/tersa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caught in a snowfall towards evening in the foothills of the Frostbacks, the party takes shelter for the night. While Alistair and Elissa Cousland stand watch by a meager fire, they share stories of happy childhood memories when they were warm, well fed, and safe.</p><p>A fluff piece with a touch of melancholy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fireside Tales

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Ficmas 2011 prompt, " _Huddling for warmth. A good old fashioned campfire scene where the characters try to keep their mind off the cold by telling stories of feasts and holidays, warm mead and roaring fires. Flirting/nervous glances and laughter all the better. Ideally DA:O with Alistair and a FemWarden (Cousland would make me really happy)_ ".

They’d barely reached the foothills of the Frostbacks when Leliana looked at the soft piles of clouds massing over the mountains and said, “There’s snow in those. We’d best find shelter before it comes.”

They did, a shallow depression in a rock face just big enough for two to squeeze into. Earth magic from Wynne and a little elbow grease, and a tent was pegged to create a barrier between the cave and the elements. A little more earth magic created a pit for the fire that started to blaze up as the first snowflakes started to fall.

“We’re not going anywhere for a while,” Leliana commented, pulling the hood of her cloak a little higher over her head.

“I will take first watch,” Elissa said.

Alistair sighed. “I’m not getting to sleep anytime soon. I’ll join you.”

“I guess Leliana and I will turn in then,” Wynne commented dryly, looking between the two warriors.

The sky darkened, and the cold deepened. Shivering, Elissa scooted closer to Alistair, who glanced at her in pleased surprise when she pressed her shoulder into his. She said, “Tell me a story.”

“I’m no bard,” he said in a low voice, mindful of their two companions sleeping at their backs.

“I don’t care.” Knees drawn up, she hugged them to her chest with a shiver. “Tell me a happy childhood memory when you were warm and well fed and safe.”

“Warm and well fed and safe, eh.” She felt him leaning into her, and his rich voice seeming to unfurl within her chest to shield her from the cold. “There was this one time,” he began, a slow smile lighting his face. “I’d been working out in the stable all day and I was _starving_.”

“And that’s different from now…how?”

“Hush,” he said teasingly, “you wanted to hear the story. I couldn’t have been much older than seven or eight. I came into the kitchens to find it all a-flurry. Some Arl had come in unexpectedly and the staff was trying to prepare a feast for him. Now, all I cared about was finding something to eat, so I stopped one of the cook’s assistants who had been a friend of my mother’s and was always kind to me about getting some food. She was in the middle of something or other and didn’t have time for me, and said, ‘Go get yourself something from the small pot in the hearth then scoot!’”

“Uh oh,” she intoned with a growing grin. “This…doesn’t sound like it’s going to end well.”

“No, really? What gave it away.”

“You’re telling it.”

“You _wound_ me.”

She nudged his shoulder. “So then what happened?”

“Well,” he continued, but not before throwing some more wood on their carefully tended blaze. “What she hadn’t realized is that when the cook found out about the feast, she’d put together a small pudding for the head table and put it on the fire to cook. It was in the smallest pot I found, sooo….”

“You _didn’t_.”

He nodded. “I did. Fully half the pot before the cook found me out and screeched. Oh, was she _angry_ ,” he chuckled. “So was Lady Isolde. _Furious_. Just one of many times with her. But for those few moments…it was bliss.” His mirth faded as the memory did, and a corner of his mouth twitched. “The undercook got in trouble, I found out later. And it wasn’t that long after that I was sent off to the templars. But still…it’s one of my better memories of my time at Redcliffe.” Sensing his introspection when he fell quiet, she held her tongue, listening to the snow hiss into the fire. After a short while, he shook off his reflective mood and jostled her companionably. “What about you?”

“Me?” Her lips twitched, smile turning fond at the memory that surfaced at the question. “Probably the summer we went to Wycome in the Free Marches. Father was arranging for Fergus’s marriage and took Mother and me with him for the time he was there. Fergus had to stay home and run the teyrnir, but Rory came with the guards. We spent _weeks_ exploring the city, when we weren’t practicing with Ser Balin, my father’s man-at-arms.”

“Rory?”

It was asked casually enough, but Elissa detected an undercurrent of unhapppiness that she couldn’t help but grin at from the glow that sparked in her chest. It was tempered, though, by the bittersweet flavor accompanying the name. “Ser Roland Gilmore, my father’s squire before he was knighted,” she said softly, turning contemplative. “He was more Fergus’s friend than mine, but we were inseparable that summer, and continued to be close in the years after that.”

She felt him withdrawing even as he asked in a voice striving for neutrality, “Was he at Ostagar?”

“No,” she shook her head, sadness washing over her. “The last time I saw him, he was defending the gates of Highever from Arl Howe’s men, buying time for my mother and I to escape. Given everything we’ve heard since then,” she dropped her gaze, hiding her face in the fall of her hood, “I’m assuming he’s dead.”

Chagrin and sympathy softened his voice. “I’m so sorry, Elissa.” His arm came around her shoulders, his cloak draping gently around her arm as he squeezed. “I forget sometimes that you lost not just your entire family, but everyone you knew and loved. And now forced to shoulder this burden.”

Gratefully, she leaned into the contact, although she could barely feel him through the number of layers they wore. “You lost everyone you knew and loved, too, with the Grey Wardens. And aren’t you sharing the burden?” she asked, forcing teasing she didn’t feel into her voice.

“Yes, but—you lost more. Your family, your home, your position.”

She brought her gaze around to look at him, giving him a thin smile. “Very well. I lost more.”

“That’s not what I meant…” He sighed. “I’m terrible at this.”

Some humor trickled in at that. “Yes, you really are.”

He was looking at her intently, blue eyes searching her face, and she saw the shift in his expression, his eyelids drooping fractionally before he leaned forward to close the distance to kiss her. Their lips touched, his mouth hot against hers. She welcomed the quivers that traveled down and coiled in her belly, banishing, for a time, the bleak mood left in the wake of memory by reminders of the present. Bringing her hand up, she touched gloved fingers to his cheek grown scruffy from a few days of beard. He broke away at the contact, blowing out a breath. “I’m sorry, I hope that wasn’t too forward.”

She sniffed a laugh. “If it was, I would have punched you.”

“Oh, well, thank you for not punching me, then,” he said in an intimate undertone that warmed her further.

“You can kiss me again, though.”

“Oh, can I?” he drawled out with a wry smile before complying.

They separated a few minutes later, and he drew her against his side, her arm snaking around his waist beneath his cloak. “You realize we’re going to have to share a very small space to sleep in tonight.”

She tightened her grip, but then said with disappointment, “You realize Wynne and Leliana are going to be awake and a mere yard from us.”

“Unfair,” he murmured with a sigh.

“There’s always tomorrow.”

He brightened.


End file.
